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100,000 Desktops for Linux

Victory for Linux!

Well, we hope it is anyways. 100,000 desktops released from the grip of Microsoft would be a great victory for the Linux community. Open source is driving a revolution through the corporate world much more than even we realize. Home desktops are still and will remain dominated by Microsoft for quite some time, but the corporate world is realizing the potential gain in revenue that Linux and Open Source will bring them. Caldera's move to start charging a license per seat of its distro will have them destroyed only if because of the reason that the corporate world will realize the profit to be made in free open source. They save the money on the actual software, but they'll still need support, why not make their money there? Oh well, what is your comment?

If you give a man a fire he'll be warm, if you light the man on fire he'll be warm for life.

Re: 100,000 Desktops for Linux

<rant>
You need to realize that people find security in price.
Will you wear a pair of jeans you get free from someone off the streets? Maybe... but the majority of the people will not. Will you wear the 80$ pair of jeans you bought at Van Heusen? Of course.

Linux needs to win on all levels, not just "Free"... once the "FASHION" of linux hits, then the corporations will feel secure. Security in numbers. Once a few fortune 500 companies do it, the bricks will begin to follow suit, and microsoft will lose footing.
</rant>

Re: 100,000 Desktops for Linux

I understand what your saying, and I don't see any reason to not charge for support. Selling the product as a Corel product, Slackware product, or whatever it may be branded still isn't within the means of the GPL. You can charge for the replication of the CD's and such, but the actual product, of course not and should be available for download as a viable option. You should not have to buy a "license" for your product, but maybe a "support package" for your product. Corel has every right for charging a nominal fee for a support system for its users. This can usually include a hefty fee for corporate based accounts and still a pretty good chunk of money for personal accounts. Their business plan needs to be restructered to be selling support, not Linux. Otherwise Corel will die due to lack of funds, no one will purchase the product. If it starts turning into selling the Linux base system, then things are going to start getting proprietory and open source will once again be a thing of the past only to be revived by another operating system in the future. Open source still leaves A LOT of room for profit, you just have to be a little more inovative, that is the beauty of what open source causes people to do. Not only be creative in their business structure, but be creative thinkers, programmers, and users all together and so much more.

Aragorn

If you give a man a fire he'll be warm, if you light the man on fire he'll be warm for life.

Re: 100,000 Desktops for Linux

Until Linux becomes so easy to use that my Mom or her friends would be willing to install it, Linux will never get the market penetration that MS Windows, or MacOS has.

People do not like to have to call a support desk every time something goes wrong. Getting the software to do most of the work for you via wizards and what-not is what they will try first. If this doesn't work they are usually too discouraged to keep trying.

The next level of desktop users are the enthusiasts, who really are enthusiastic about a particular application, not necessarily what OS they are using. They will use Linux if their favorite Office Suite or game runs on it and runs well.

The next level are the technically oriented people and coporate IT people. Their major driver will be cost. Which OS is the cheapest to license and the cheapest to support. Which will give me the best price/performance value. I see this space as a large short-term opportunity for Linux. Linux systems are cheapter than their windows or Unix counterparts and show equal or even better performance. You see people in the engineering community moving to Linux over HP-UX, and Solaris already as these systems cost 25% of an HP or Sun workstation. These people also tend to already be computer savy to running Linux is no sweat to them.

The groups of technically oriented people who want to run Linux on the desktop is small. As Linux continues to be more easy, this group of desktop users will expand. But it will expand only if Linux becomes easier to use. This may endanger Linux's open-sourceness though I think. As companies distribute easier and easier forms of Linux, the value they add to the OS to do so may be proprietary and therefor closed-source.

So if Caldera is making a distro that they added some wizz-bang install facility that my Mom can use, and that recognizes and automatically configures her winmodem and HP scanner, and Caldera decides to make you pay for it. All power to them. Because I know an easy to use Caldera will always be cheaper that a Windows XP, because its foundation is open and therefor cheap. Just my humbe opinion.

Re: 100,000 Desktops for Linux

That is unfortunate, and I think Dell is making a mistake. What they are failing to see is that the computer market has taken a hit this entire year, sales have dropped dramatically. Of course they will see a slump in Linux sales as well. I think part of their problem is that they were only dealing with Red Hat. As much as I appreciate all of the Distro's, Red Hat isn't the one that I would go with for Desktops, give them mandrake or corel or even Caldera. All of these are easy on the eyes for people who don't know what they are doing. I am sure that some people bought it with Linux just to kinda see what Linux is and boom they got hit with a system they could barely log into! If anything holds Linux back from being on the desktop, it will be that CEO's are making bad business decisions regarding Linux. Apply to the market of Newbies, there are more newbies than there are Gurus.

Aragorn

If you give a man a fire he'll be warm, if you light the man on fire he'll be warm for life.

Re: 100,000 Desktops for Linux

I agree it is a mistake, they must not have noticed that all sales are down. There is nothing wrong with Redhat for a newbie, but since the release of KDE 2.x, it leaves the current Gnome desktop in the dust. KDE 2.x is the desktop too use right now, especially new users. I haven't used Gnome, except as the root user on my RedHat systems since KDE 2.x came out.

Re: 100,000 Desktops for Linux

To be completely honest, I'd worry about the life expectancy of Gnome right now...KDE is making leaps and bounds while GNome is crawling along right now. They really need to get the ball rolling if they want to stay alive. We as Linux Users need some more rival BIG windows managers, Gnome and KDE is all we really have for the large scale....but I am sure in good time we'll have another one!

Aragorn

If you give a man a fire he'll be warm, if you light the man on fire he'll be warm for life.

Re: 100,000 Desktops for Linux

I don't think Gnome is going anywhere, but they definitely need to get on the ball. Last I saw the Gnome 2.0 release was scheduled for December. I don't think we need another desktop, but just continue to improve the two we have.